Holy Cross graduation speaker tells about The Race Card Project

WORCESTER – Once he threw things at them.
Now he looks at their foreheads. He’s looking for more than scars.
Michele Norris, award-winning journalist, was telling a story in her address for the 172nd commencement of the College of the Holy Cross, held May 25 in the DCU Center.
The first African-American female host of NPR’s program “All Things Considered,” program, she was an honorary degree recipient, along with Ellen S. Dunlap, president of the American Antiquarian Society, and David P. Ryan, chief of the hematology and oncology division at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Nearly 750 graduates were expected to receive bachelor’s degrees, the college reported beforehand.
Ms. Norris used The Race Card Project she runs to challenge graduates. The project involves asking people to write six words that describe their memories, thoughts or perceptions about the word “race,” she said, and shared the following.
“I’m only Asian when it’s convenient.”
“You love God, but not me?”
“Underneath, we all taste like chicken.”
Then there was the memory an elderly white man in North Carolina handed her: “Race is rocks thrown at kids!” She said he fought back tears as he told his story.
In his younger years, he opposed integration – by throwing rocks, bricks or rotting vegetables at children crossing the color line to go to school.
Now he looks at the foreheads of black people, searching for scars.
“He knows that he bloodied someone with one of those bricks,” Ms. Norris said. “He got ‘attaboys’” for hitting his target. “He’s looking for the chance to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ He knew at the time that throwing rocks was wrong. … There was a little voice that said, ‘Don’t do this.’ He didn’t listen to that voice in his head.”
She told graduates, “That voice is usually your true voice,” and urged them: “Do listen” to it, especially when “it’s drowned out by the crowd.” She said they should allow that voice to guide them to speak up for others, and that Holy Cross has helped clarify that.
Ms. Norris talked about the importance of listening and being “where you are,” in a generation in which people are too busy using their cell phones to interact with individuals in front of them.
“I dare you to listen and engage fully with someone that you don’t agree with,” she challenged graduates. She asked what people are missing when they listen only to that which confirms what they already believe.
Don’t try to quantify success in terms of numbers, whether it’s how many followers you have on social media or how large your salary is, she also challenged.
“Success and excellence do not always live on the same street,” she said. She asked whether a “million-dollar (baseball) pitcher” is more successful than a Little League coach and said “the answer is simple if you’re only looking at numbers.” It’s not so simple if you’re looking for excellence, which “one is not born into.” Discipline, self-sacrifice and a strong moral compass are needed.
To get “a clearer picture of your blessings,” she suggested replacing the word “have” with the word “get.” Then “I have to take out the trash” becomes “I get to take out the trash,” because most people in the world don’t have curbside garbage pickup.
She suggested honoring those who make your life easier, such as the people cleaning up after graduation. She told graduates that in doing so they will honor Holy Cross.
Jesuit Father Philip L. Boroughs, the college’s president, and Taylor Pels, the valedictorian, sounded some similar themes.
Father Boroughs recalled telling the graduates, as freshmen, about St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier and St. Peter Favre founding the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) during their college years at the University of Paris. He told them then that he wondered what human needs would inspire their generosity and what life-transforming projects they would devise to serve the common good?
“Hopefully the education you have received, the values we have emphasized and the profession you are choosing will engage some of the real needs facing the human family and will do so in ways which can reach across some of the differences which currently divide our country,” he told them at their commencement.
“We often” gravitate toward the easier “dump and stir” process, Ms. Pels said, likening life to chemistry, her major. But Holy Cross encourages students to pursue a high standard and seek a greater reward.
Service is not a requirement, but Holy Cross students do it and are purified by it, she said. The school’s Jesuit mission calls for not just pursuing professional success, but seeking justice.